Lucien Hoffmann

Director of the Environmental Research and Innovation Department (ERIN), LIST

Lucien Hoffmann (PhD in Biology) is director of the Environmental Research and Innovation (ERIN) department (http://www.list.lu/en/erin/) at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST). The ambition of the ERIN department is to implement a smart green vision, accelerating innovation towards the sustainable management of natural resources. The ERIN department brings together with its teams made of 170 life, environmental, and IT scientists and engineers, the necessary interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to tackle major environmental challenges our cities are facing today.

In the space sector, the ERIN is mainly active in the use of Earth Observation (EO) data for environmental and risk management applications. The RDI activities are geared towards a better use of EO data in operational water resources and ecosystem management tools and to integrate remote sensing data (satellite, airborne and ground) together with global navigation satellite systems for near real-time eco-hydrological, hydraulic, and crop growth modelling. The overall objectives are to (1) improve numerical model-based hydrological and hydraulic predictions of streamflow for improved flood and drought management and to (2) integrate advanced remote sensing technologies and environmental modelling for an improved understanding of plant-soil-water interactions across different spatiotemporal scales. These activities are supported by competences to handle the data deluge with experts in data analytics, statistics, data visualization, geocomputation and data management, e.g. spatial data uncertainty analytics, massive data visualization or filling gaps in time series. ERIN is also active in studying how satellite networks will be integrated in future 5G-IoT (Internet of Things) systems, enabling efficient crisis management, and environmental monitoring. Current activities aim to evaluate performance of IoT application protocols (such as CoAP, MQTT) on satellite links, using simulators and a real IoT-satellite testbed.

The results of the research activities find their main applications in environmental and industrial risk and crisis management (flood forecasting and mapping, damage assessment, risk analysis, critical infrastructures, maritime surveillance…) and in applications related to food security and precision agriculture (plant stress detection, crop nitrogen management, assessment of crop water use, etc.).

The ERIN department represents Luxembourg in the Copernicus Relays network and the Copernicus Academy network.